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'Just tell them it has beavers': Montana might sell itself to Canada

This is what North America would look like if Canada were to actually accept Montana's 'offer' in exchange for one trillion dollars.Photo: https://www.change.org/p/christian-moms-against-private-education-sell-montana-to-canada-for-1-trillion-to-eliminate-the-national-debt

Tyler Dawson

Published: February 21, 2019 - 6:51 PM

EDMONTON — Montana’s politicians have failed to rule out the possibility of selling the state to Canada for $1 trillion.

The purported benefits would include having Justin Trudeau as leader.

“My pages, at special request, wanted to let everyone know that they’re strongly in support of having Justin Trudeau as president of the country,” Jessica Karjala told her fellow legislators at the Montana House of Representatives on Wednesday.

An online petition posted last week to Change.org is calling for the sale of the state to Canada. “We have too much debt and Montana is useless. Just tell them it has beavers or something,” the petition says.

As of Thursday, nearly 13,000 people — it’s unknown how many of them were actually Montanans — had signed the petition.

The tongue-in-cheek proposal has received some attention locally. In the Great Falls Tribune, the daily newspaper in Great Falls, reporter Kristen Inbody asked: “Would Montana still be named Montana or would we be Southern Alberta? Better Saskatchewan?”

I’m learning O Canada now. Just in case

There were other big questions standing before Montanans, too.

“Would we have to drop our speed limits to match the achingly slow pace of Canadian travel? Because that might be a deal-breaker …” the column asked.

Good question. And, of course, the French issue: “Bilingual, blah, blah. Do we have to learn French?”

At a vote on Wednesday, the House State Administration committee considered the petition (albeit jokingly). But it failed to receive the 75 per cent vote needed to draft a bill to reject the proposal.

Rep. Tyson Running Wolf was wholeheartedly opposed to the resolution to reject the idea. “”I have probably three-quarters of my relatives living in Canada and we’re all for trying to buy Montana. So I’m gonna be a hard no on this,” he told the committee.

Among the suggested amendments was a proposal that Montana buy Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Rep. Denise Hayman, born in Winnipeg, told her fellow members “welcome aboard,” to laughs from the committee members.

They had previously voted in favour of the resolution, on Tuesday, but because of a procedural issue, had to do it again. This time, the committee failed to get three-quarters support, with 14 voting in favour of the motion and six against.

Rep. Forrest Mandeville, who chairs the committee, said it was “good to take a little break and laugh.” He said he got the idea for the resolution from reading a newspaper article about the petition and thought it would be fun to bring it up at committee.

“I’m learning O Canada now,” Mandeville told the Post when asked about the resolution’s failure to pass. “Just in case. We might have to negotiate that price up a little bit; I’m not sure $1 trillion will do it.”